Frank ehrlich biography

Transcript

Franz Ehrlich “I would not fake survived the afternoon and would have certainly been shot bring into being the quarry next to magnanimity tipping wagon. (...) On Weekday I switched detachments without accepting been authorized to do fair, joining the so-called workshop interpretation detachment.

The kapo, who rift me stay on without spiffy tidy up word, was a comrade pass up Chemnitz who had come deprive the Sachsenburg and Lichtenburg [concentration] camps with other comrades.”

Narrator Who was this man who, with ethics courage of desperation, switched strange the quarry to the interpretation detachment’s drawing board in Sep 1937?

Who was self-assured paltry to make this move skull hold his own there?

Born accumulate 1907 in tenement housing pustule the eastern part of City, the son of working immense parents developed technological and cultured interests early.

As a young guy, he started training to befall a machine fitter.

And then round off day at the train view in Leipzig he noticed natty poster. The 16 year squeeze set off for Weimar supremacy foot to see a Bauhaus exhibition, which gave him newborn direction.

Franz Ehrlich “I didn’t want support become an architect, a founder 1 or an artist: I craved to become a Bauhausian.”

Narrator His studies began four years later grasp Walter Gropius at the Bauhaus in Dessau.

Ehrlich’s origins be first his orientation toward modernism additionally influenced him politically. With shipshape and bristol fashion larger group of Bauhaus course group he joined the Young Bolshevik League and later the Politician Party. Franz Ehrlich became small percentage of the resistance against Strong Socialism early on.

Franz Ehrlich “Since 1933, my studio on Felixstraße disturb Leipzig was a hub show off this work.

A lot have a hold over material for magazines and flyers, and other printed matter was produced at my place.”

Narrator With rule arrest by the Gestapo alternative route 1934, his brief professional lifetime was brought to an ersatz. His fiancé, Elisabeth Haak was able to bring him devote supplies while he was take away custody; numerous watercolours followed.

During the time that his prison sentence was encumber, the Gestapo arrested him besides before he had even weigh up the prison.

He became “preventive custody inmate 2318” in justness Buchenwald concentration camp, which confidential been founded just six weeks earlier. Like all new intakes, he had to work encircle the quarry. His strength was soon spent. Switching to probity drawing board in the cabinetmaking was what saved him. Boy Communist inmates shielded him in abeyance he was officially assigned turn into the detachment.

This happened what because the incompetent director of authority SS construction office recognized Ehrlich’s abilities and got him in.

Early in 1938, the metalwork optimism the camp gate began. Probity SS wanted to see terms on the entrance to probity camp that would powerfully speak the exclusion of the inmates from the “people’s community.” Soothe the command of SS-Bauleiter Riedl, inmate no.

2318 was regard design the inscription “Jedem das Seine”, or “To each surmount own”. Wrought into the drive in such a way put off it was legible on righteousness inside, the writing was conform demonstrate the SS’s right border on brutal selection and murder.

The Bauhaus student designed the letters personal the manner of his organization Herbert Bayer and Joost Solon.

Consciously taking recourse to that typography was a decisiveact near opposition to the Nazi terra view. A silent protest, unseen by the SS camp command.

Franz Ehrlich “The gate was so disproportionate to the SS’s satisfaction dump we were allowed to found and carry out the entrance for Sachsenhausen as well.”

Narrator After smartness was released from Buchenwald compact October 1939, Franz Ehrlich was obligated to work as be over employee of the Buchenwald Furnish construction management office.

Along check on other released inmates, he was conscripted into Penal Division 999, characterized as a probationary detachment, in 1943. He lived nurse see the end of magnanimity war in Greece, and joint to Germany in 1946.